The Limey

The Limey #3: Internet Troubles

Which UK Internet Service Provider is going to look out for my gaming needs?

I'm stealing my dear old dad's bandwidth as I type. Three weeks or so after I got back to England, I'm working during the weekdays flip-flopping between my parent's house and my brother's house. Both establishments have ADSL broadband, while the house I'm about to move into has none. Yet.

I'm sitting here watching a 640MB patch for the European version of World of Warcraft stream fairly quickly to my desktop. But I'm starting to get a little concerned. My dad's Internet plan has a monthly data cap on it. So does my brother's. Both members of my family get to use a maximum of 40GB per month; once it's used up, they can pay an extra four pounds (about $6 given the current exchange rate) and step the plan up to 80GB per month.

But they personally never, ever, ever come close to this data cap. Myself, however, well that's a different story. Did I forget to mention that I left my laptop here overnight downloading the whole WoW client? Yeah, that thing clocks in at like 4.5GB. I've already consumed more than 10 percent of the monthly allowance with just two downloads. This troubles me greatly.

Un'Goro Crater: Downloading this zone costs bandwidth.

For starters, my work for GameSpy can be bandwidth-intensive; managing media files, uploading, downloading, streaming, etc. But it's my life as an online gamer or indeed, a person that relies on the Internet for daily news, information and entertainment that's going to thump through that 40GB per month limit very quickly. So what are my options?

The key to solving the riddle was to take some time out and do a little research into the various ISPs that the UK has to offer. Not all of the providers are as draconian with bandwidth it would seem, but one small factor I forgot to mention pertaining to my family's ISP is that broadband is free; it comes as no extra charge with the telephone landline, and both locations regularly experience download rates ranging from 4-6 Mbps. That's a really nice incentive to the more casual users or those who don't use BitTorrent.

As an aside, I've just started downloading patch #3 for WoW. This one only comes in at 45MB.